Minari

It’s obvi­ous but impor­tant to note that Lee Isaac Chung ​’s Minari is as Amer­i­can a film as it gets. Set in the 1980s, on the cusp of Ronald Reagan’s pres­i­den­cy, it is the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal sto­ry of a Kore­an-Amer­i­can fam­i­ly adjust­ing to life in Arkansas after mov­ing there from the West Coast.

It is, above all else, a sto­ry of faith and resilience, but also resis­tance to cul­tur­al and social assim­i­la­tion. Like the minari plants of the title, which are able to thrive on even the most unlike­ly ter­rain, the mem­bers of the fam­i­ly at the film’s cen­tre grit their teeth and start again. The strug­gle of rebuild­ing from the ground up is embod­ied by the vir­gin soil on the tract of rur­al land the fam­i­ly have just pur­chased with their mea­gre savings.

Chung’s sto­ry fol­lows the fam­i­ly as patri­arch Jacob (Steven Yeun) seeks to devel­op a farm grow­ing Kore­an crops. While the chil­dren – old­er daugh­ter Anne (Noël Kate Cho) and younger, Amer­i­can-born son David (Alan S Kim) – seem to think noth­ing of this move, their moth­er Mon­i­ca (Han Ye-ri) dis­plays imme­di­ate dis­may. Join­ing a lit­tle lat­er is Monica’s moth­er Soon­ja (Youn Yuh- jung), who is a mite more open-mind­ed about the ven­ture despite her no-non­sense nature.

Jacob’s obses­sion with the idea of mak­ing his farm a suc­cess (and thus ful­fill­ing his role as fam­i­ly head and provider) appears almost Sisyphean in the seem­ing­ly nev­er end­ing pro­ces­sion of set­backs that unfold across the film’s run­time. There’s an imme­di­ate uneasi­ness as Mon­i­ca point­ed­ly and suc­cinct­ly tells Jacob, ​“This isn’t what you promised.” Her trust in his schemes is wan­ing, and con­tin­ues to do so as their son’s heart defect weighs heavy on her mind. The frac­tures between the two are made all the more appar­ent by scenes of fail­ing inti­ma­cy, as well as the children’s prac­ticed inter­ven­tion dur­ing the par­ents’ loud­er fights.

Han trans­mits the acute dis­tress that con­tin­ued sup­port of her husband’s schemes brings. Her long­ing for the city, and per­haps even an escape back to Korea, is ever appar­ent, albeit unspo­ken. This furtive state­ment only empha­sis­es the empti­ness of their rick­ety mobile home, which itself feels rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the lack of a safe­ty net or sup­port sys­tem for a fam­i­ly already on the brink.

An ear­ly phys­i­cal gag show­ing Jacob climb­ing up into his new home, sans steps, and the the­mat­ic detail of Minari is clear. As with a lot of Chung’s painful obser­va­tions about striv­ing for self-sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the US, it’s a moment tinged with absur­di­ty. That light strain of com­e­dy is a pow­er­ful ele­ment in the film’s sub­ver­sive treat­ment of the con­ven­tion, imme­di­ate­ly set­ting it free of the mis­er­ab­list sen­si­bil­i­ties that often define such chron­i­cles of immi­grants, the work­ing class or even just non-white families.

But Minari’s recourse to com­e­dy is an essen­tial part of its focus on striv­ing against what are often unrea­son­able odds. As Jacob helps Mon­i­ca into the house, the waver­ing trust and air of both con­vic­tion and des­per­a­tion is already clear. A sin­gle word on the sub­ject of the family’s sec­ond new begin­ning has yet to be spoken.

Despite an ini­tial focus on parental woes, the explo­ration of pint-sized David’s per­spec­tive on becom­ing Amer­i­can is the heart of the film – at points lit­er­al­ly so as he strug­gles with the lim­its imposed by his bur­geon­ing car­dio­vas­cu­lar issues.

His evolv­ing per­spec­tive on what it means to be Amer­i­can – and the film’s most potent emo­tion­al hook – is char­ac­terised by his new rela­tion­ship with his grand­moth­er Soon­ja, played by Youn Yuh-jung in what might be the film’s best and most live­ly per­for­mance. Even when turn­ing his nose up at cer­tain Kore­an foods (includ­ing Soonja’s acrid med­i­c­i­nal ton­ic), his child­ish refusal to engage with his elder and her antics nev­er asks us to look down on him, even at his most petu­lant and frustrating.

Unlike most of his fam­i­ly, David was born in Amer­i­ca, and knows lit­tle of Kore­an cul­ture. He even active­ly shuns it, par­tial­ly through his stand­off­ish­ness with Soon­ja (“She smells like Korea!”). In his eyes she doesn’t act like a real grand­ma: she speaks with abra­sive lan­guage and watch­es wrestling on TV while ham­mer­ing back Moun­tain Dew. As fun­ny and charm­ing as Youn’s per­for­mance is, it’s also an embod­i­ment of the idea that not ful­ly assim­i­lat­ing isn’t fail­ure, but a mark­er of inde­pen­dence. For all her seem­ing­ly chaot­ic actions, Soon­ja is a strange­ly sta­bil­is­ing pres­ence for the fam­i­ly, remind­ing the younger gen­er­a­tion of their roots while also show­ing an open-mind­ed­ness when it comes to trav­el­ling down new paths.

For all his own play­ful­ness, young Kim (sport­ing minia­ture cow­boy boots through­out) has a sense of reserve to his actions. This is like­ly self-imposed, due to his parent’s con­cern for his health, but also a reflec­tion of his desire to fit in with his peers. The slow shift in Kim’s per­for­mance as he plays off of Youn, towards the real­i­sa­tion that his behav­iour shouldn’t change mere­ly for the ben­e­fit of the oth­ers, is tru­ly touch­ing – even dev­as­tat­ing – in its accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the expe­ri­ences of first-gen­er­a­tion chil­dren and in the grow­ing ten­der­ness between the two char­ac­ters. Kim’s per­for­mance evokes the social dra­mas of Japan­ese film­mak­er Hirokazu Kore-eda, who sim­i­lar­ly imbues the emo­tion­al lives of chil­dren with a qui­et dignity.

Chung’s del­i­cate hand in por­tray­ing each character’s per­son­al strug­gle is clear from the out­set, this patch of Amer­i­can coun­try­side depict­ed in hazy gold­en light and soft focus. The fam­i­ly (with sleep­ing chil­dren) pull up behind the rental truck trans­port­ing them to anoth­er fresh start. Chung observes the fam­i­ly with a sub­tle and qui­et grace that isn’t often afford­ed to non-white fam­i­lies of the rur­al work­ing class. Lach­lan Milne’s cam­er­a­work cap­tures ver­dant land­scapes bathed in hues of glow­ing nat­ur­al light. The film’s hazy, dream­like images evoke the ephemer­al nature of Jacob’s promise to his fam­i­ly – one that has appar­ent­ly been made time and again.

In observ­ing the family’s inter­ac­tions with one anoth­er across the course of the film, Chung makes clear that faith is the unit­ing fac­tor, but not strict­ly in the spir­i­tu­al sense. Their move to Arkansas stems from Jacob’s faith in his idea of the Amer­i­can Dream, and the family’s coop­er­a­tion based on their faith in him as the patri­arch. David learns to have faith in the val­ue of his her­itage, and his own resilience.

Every char­ac­ter in Minari has reached some cri­sis of faith, and it’s a sign of the film’s restraint that it resists the urge to place these themes direct­ly in the ser­mons of the church that the Yi fam­i­ly inter­mit­tent­ly attend. Jacob speaks of prac­ti­cal­i­ty and log­ic in view­ing the world, mock­ing prayers and acts of blind faith, such as a man who can sup­pos­ed­ly locate ground water with a dows­ing rod.

This is the con­tra­dic­tion at the core of his char­ac­ter, that with­out real­is­ing, he is both ratio­nal­ist and dream­er. Chung embod­ies that para­dox in the film’s tex­tur­al details, such as in its prac­ti­cal­ly spir­i­tu­al (per­haps even Mal­ick-esque) imagery of the land, and the mix­ture of earthy strings and ethe­re­al vocals of Emile Mosseri’s score.

What Jacob appears obliv­i­ous to – him­self hav­ing an overt­ly Bib­li­cal name – is that work­ing for self-suf­fi­cien­cy requires its own kind of faith. He prays to the land for deliv­er­ance, to save his fam­i­ly. Chung’s ambigu­ous depic­tion of faith sug­gests that God and the Dream are sim­i­lar­ly ill-defined pres­ences. Each fam­i­ly mem­ber has a dif­fer­ent notion of the impor­tance of both, and each has their own cross to bear, some­thing lit­er­alised by the some­what absurd visu­al of a man drag­ging a giant wood­en one down the road.

Minari doesn’t seek answers to these ques­tions nor a uni­ver­sal depic­tion of reli­gion, immi­gra­tion or assim­i­la­tion. Its pow­er lies in por­tray­ing how these ideas com­pli­cate the Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence, and the sim­ple beau­ty of wit­ness­ing a fam­i­ly reaf­firm­ing their devo­tion to one another.

Minari is avail­able to watch at home from 2 April and is released in cin­e­mas 17 May.